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Which solution of the 3?

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Joined
23 May 2006
Posts
1,774
OKay narrowed my choices down to this for 1920 *1200 gaming

Crossfire XFX 6870 = £248 (Only 1GB ram across two, is PSU good enough, is SLI is a pain)
6950 Frozer 3 = £200 (ATI drivers, will it fit in a fractal?, worse performance than SLI))
480 Asus = £225 (Noise and heat, worse performance than SLI but better than 6950, NVIDIA drivers better (IMHO))

I run off of a Corsair HX650, as far as I know it should cope with all of the above.

Pro's and con's to all solutions but not sure what way to jump :(

Help
 
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SLI is for Nvidia cards, ATI has crossfire. Crossfire is good with the 6*** series but if l was in your shows l would go for the 6950.
 
Personally id crossfire the two 6870's
You'll get better performance and two graphics cards always look better than one in a nice new build!
 
Yeah sorry terminology mixed up.

My PC is hidden away so looks don't matter :D

Is my PSU good enough to Crossfire?
 
I know many people find crossfire/SLI no problem but plenty of others have no end of problems, and if you are playing games as soon as they come out there is the usual round of driver updates and configuration changes to get the best (or even playable) frame rates from the cards. I'd get the 6950, install only the driver and no CCC. Use MSI afterburner to change settings such as fan speed, clocks and voltage. No worries about your PSU and I'm sure your case will still look lovely despite having only one card :D
 
I'd go for the 480, but get one with a custom cooler. If you look hard enough you can find big brand ones just over £200. Significantly quicker than the 6950 and, although power draw is still an issue, a decent cooler will deal with the heat issue.
 
FYI
I run an overclocked i7 and overclocked 480 on the same type of PSU with no issue, so your good to go on that front.
 
I'd go for the 480, but get one with a custom cooler. If you look hard enough you can find big brand ones just over £200. Significantly quicker than the 6950 and, although power draw is still an issue, a decent cooler will deal with the heat issue.

What model exactly should I be looking for?
 
Crossfire 6870 will blow the other options out of the water fps wise. I play at your resolution using 1 6870 and have no probs running all my games so 2 of them would be very good.
 
Preferably, if you can source a 480 which is comparable to the 6950 price then yeah, go for it. If power draw is of a concern to you then a 6950 will more than suffice. I can't see you being disappointed with either card really.
 
Crossfire 6870's would be the best performance wise.

But for simplicity, less power draw, lower noise and nice performance id go for the 6950 :)

2 graphics cards look good and do work quite a lot of the time, but the usually have more problems than one :) so if you dont want a lot of hassle, id go for the 6950 :D
 
Would go for the 6950 myself, cheaper, quieter, less power draw...although not really an issue here i'd say.

And perfectly able to meet your needs. But the gtx 480 is obviously the more powerful card.
 
I know many people find crossfire/SLI no problem but plenty of others have no end of problems, and if you are playing games as soon as they come out there is the usual round of driver updates and configuration changes to get the best (or even playable) frame rates from the cards.

In the case of xfire, caps are usually out within days to sort out most issues, failing that, there is 'radeon pro' for all your xfire needs. Amd's 6 series has fantastic scaling.

Is the sun ever going to come out in Kilwinning AshenShugar1873?

Gigabyte 480 SE or SOC
The SE yes, but the SOC, I wouldn't recommend at all with all the artifact problems it has.
People have been rma'ing it left right and centre with most getting a 'No fault' verdict and having to pay for return postage costs to boot when the cards are clearly not performing at advertised speeds.
 
I went with a 6950 2gb in the end for my 1920 *1200 set up, my logic was in a year IF I needed the boost I could get another and XFIRE it, and I'll have a 2GB total solution

Seems to eat up everything I've thrown at it to date (Playing rather than pointless benchmarking)
 
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